Fresh vs Zed

Fresh is a free, open-source terminal IDE and text editor designed to work alongside a full IDE and drive coding agents. Its Orchestrator gives each task its own Git worktree, tabs, terminals, and agent. Fresh can run terminal agents including Claude Code, Codex, and OpenCode, or a command supplied by the user. Workspaces can run locally, over SSH, in Kubernetes, or in a dev container. Git review tools include hunk-level staging, unstaging, and discarding, side-by-side diffs, and notes exportable to Markdown. Editing features include multi-cursor support, keyboard macros, Vim mode, regex search and replace, and project-wide search. Fresh supports multiple language servers per language and lists configurations for Python, TypeScript, Rust, Go, Java, C/C++, and Ruby, among others. Its integrated terminal offers multiple tabs and split placement. The product page says Fresh can open multi-gigabyte files without blocking the interface. Plugins are written in TypeScript and run sandboxed inside Fresh’s single binary.

Zed is a code editor for macOS, Windows, and Linux, with Personal, Pro, and Business plans. Personal is free forever and includes 2,000 accepted edit predictions; it also allows unlimited use with API keys or external agents. Pro costs $10.00 per month, includes unlimited edit predictions and $5 of tokens, and bills usage beyond that allowance at API list price plus 10%. The Pro trial lasts 14 days or until its $5 balance is used, with no credit card required. Editing tools include extensions, multi-cursor and column editing, and macro recording; the editor also supports a built-in debugger, remote development, and language servers. Native Git operations include staging, commits, pulls, pushes, and viewing diffs. Users can chat with teammates, code together, and share screens and projects. Supported model providers include Amazon Bedrock, Anthropic, GitHub Copilot, Google AI, and OpenAI; the extension ecosystem has hundreds of extensions. Business costs $30.00 per month and has no minimum seat count. SSO, SAML, and SCIM are planned but not currently available.